Many townships and cities have recycling centers for most plastics, metals, glass and paper and/or cardboard. But what about the plastic that’s thin, the stuff that the recycling centers don’t take?

I myself have some to realize just how much plastic in in our lives. It’s hard to imagine that prior to the development of this “wonder” material in the early 1900’s there was no plastic anything, and when nylon came into being in the 1930’s plastic began to invade our lives in all kinds of ways.

We now know that some of the variants of plastic can cause us harm (endocrine disruption, heavy metals and/or poisons, carcinogens). These are often made worse when food is heated (often via the microwave) instead of placing the food in glass or other solid surfaced containers, or stored long term in a non-food safe plastic container. Nor did we realized that plastic would take hundreds of years to breakdown, if at all. And now we are forced to find ways to dispense with it, or to eliminate using it altogether.

So how can or should I recycle plastic?

Many grocery stores, and, now even our Walgreens, have big recycling boxes located near the entrances for depositing plastic bags. All those single use bags that some states and cities are now banning (thank goodness!). But did you know the recycling boxes will accept more than just the store bags?

What else besides shopping bags?

What else constitutes “plastic film”? Things like:

• dry cleaning plastic bags that cover your cleaned clothes
• packing plastic – those air pillows in what seems like every box of stuff ordered on line (just pop them first to conserve space), plastic pouches,
• the plastic that wraps up disposable bottled water (start drinking water from the tap in a reusable container!), paper towels or disposable diapers
• plastic produce bags (buy reusable mesh produce bags)
• plastic bread wrappers
• newspaper bags (for those of you who still get a paper delivered)
• And of course, the one time use grocery store food bags (buy some nice cloth bags or shopping boxes that can be re-used hundreds of times, and are washable/wipe-able to keep them clean and germ free)…some of them are so cute!

A few simple ideas to recycle, and even some green solutions to keep the plastic out of the house to begin with! For more ideas and information about recycling plastics, visit Store Drop-Off.

Photo credit: The image used above of plastic recyclables is from their website.

What else have you done to recycle plastics, or not use them in the first place?